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For more information about Ad Pods and to enable your account with the feature please contact your account manager.

SSAI Workflow

Most SSAI vendors work in a similar manner. They are all VAST compliant and the general workflow goes like this:

1. Player calls SSAI vendor for content
1. The SSAI vendor is configured to know where the HLS or DASH content streams reside (usually a CDN or S3)
2. The HLS or DASH content has cue points to tell the SSAI vendor when to insert ads
2. When a cue point is about to be reached, the SSAI vendor calls out to SpringServe for ads. 
3. When SpringServe gets the call we:
1. Find all demand partners that pass targeting
2. Call them all server side and follow any wrapper VASTs until we get to an asset
3. Fill the pod as much as possible (adhering to the tiers created in SpringServe)
4. Stitch in our impression and other beacons for tracking 
5. Return the resulting VAST to the SSAI vendor
4. The SSAI vendor then takes the assets from the VAST, transcodes them and stitches them into the HLS/DASH stream

Example:  MediaTailor Integration:

To configure an SSAI vendor is pretty straight forward.  At a minimum it requires two fields: content source and ad decision server.

Content Source:

This is the CDN or S3 bucket where the SSAI vendor can access the HLS or DASH streams.  Here is what that looks like in MediaTailor:

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Ad Decision Server

This is the ad server’s VAST endpoint (in this case SpringServe) that you want the SSAI vendor to call in order to know which ads to play.  

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SpringServe makes this even easier by showing you which macros you can populate in our tag export.